22 September 2015

Ya Think?

BOTH U.S. AND CATHOLICISM IN CRISIS-- that's the headline of a piece today by Patrick Buchanan, writing on the eve of Francis' visit to this country. You'd have to say yes, they are. Of course, the Catholic Church can never fail, while no such protection extends to the land of sodomy and the home of infanticide.

But saying the Church can't fail doesn't really give one the assurance of calm and comfort. We could sure use a Pope who accepts the Catholic faith about now.

The Catholic Church, too, faces a growing crisis of moral consistency and credibility.

The church of Pius XII and John Paul II taught that the truths of the Ten Commandments brought down from Sinai and the truths of the Sermon on the Mount are eternal. Those popes also taught that a valid marriage is indissoluble, that homosexuality is unnatural and immoral, that abortion is the killing of the innocent unborn, an abomination.

Yet one reads regularly of discussions inside the Vatican to alter what is infallible church teaching on these doctrines to make the church more appealing to those who have rejected them.

As the pope arrives in America, some Catholics are calling for an acceptance of contraception, the ordination of women and a new acceptance of homosexuality. Yet the Episcopalians, who have embraced all these “reforms” and more, appear to be going the way of James Fenimore Cooper’s Mohicans.

In Cuba, Pope Francis declined to address the repression of the Castro brothers. Will he also avoid America’s moral crisis to chatter on about income inequality and climate change and find common ground with Obama?

What has come out of the Vatican in the past two years is moral confusion. Yet as Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput reminds us, “confusion is of the devil.” It is also trifling with schism.

Having emerged victorious in the 70-year ideological struggle against one of the greatest enemies that mankind has ever known, Marxism-Leninism, are the United States and the Catholic Church heading for the same desuetude and disintegration?

A Day That Will Live in Glory

Pray for the Four Cardinals: Burke, Caffarra, Meiser and Brandmuller

“You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day."